


Goodnight, upstairs neighbor dude

by everchanginginks



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: FBI Agent Stiles Stilinski, M/M, Pre-Slash, Single Parent Derek Hale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-29
Updated: 2018-08-29
Packaged: 2019-07-04 03:56:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15833268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/everchanginginks/pseuds/everchanginginks
Summary: This is for the prompt: The guy upstairs was saying “goodnight, have good dreams” to his child and I said “Goodnight to you, too, upstairs neighbor dude” a little too loudly and he said “goodnight, neighbor” and now I can never leave the apartment again out of embarrassment.





	Goodnight, upstairs neighbor dude

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kisha](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kisha/gifts).



> This is for my friend, Kisha. Congratulations on graduating, babe! <3

“Sir, we’re here.”

The politely spoken words tear Stiles from his slumber. He jolts into motion and sits up straight fast enough for his seatbelt to pin him back to the leather. He’s momentarily disoriented, his brain sleep heavy and sluggish as it tries to catch up with his surroundings. An idling engine, the yellow light of streetlamps working around the shadows to play across his lap and a slightly concerned face peering at him from the driver’s seat.

Right. Cab. He took a cab from the airport. Stiles sighs and runs his hand over his face and through his hair in a desperate attempt to jostle at least a couple of brain cells awake.

“Uh, thanks,” he croaks and clears his throat around the gravel smothering his voice. He reaches for his duffle bag which rests on the seat next to him and digs out his wallet. “What do I owe you?”

Stiles pays the driver, who wishes him a good night, and with the duffle bag in hand he gets out of the cab. The old building towering in front of him is what he calls home, even though he sometimes feels like he spends more time on the road than he does in the three room apartment on the fourth floor. This is the first time he steps foot through the door in two weeks, having spent the last fourteen days in a cheap Maryland motel on the outskirts of Chesapeake State Forest. Seven missing hikers. Local law enforcement had believed it to be a wendigo. By the time the Anomalous Entity Branch was alerted and sent a team, an officer had disappeared too.

It had been a Hidebehind. There was no talking with it, it’s wide, pitch black eyes glazed over with crazed hunger. Stiles had torched it with alcohol.

Torching creatures feeding on human intestines makes for a lot of paperwork. Stiles feels like his exhaustion is understandable.

His apartment gapes empty and quiet. He drops his bag on the floor in the hallway and steps out of his shoes on his way towards the kitchen. The potted plant his father had given him a month or so ago looks as dead as Stiles feels where it perches on the windowsill, its once green leaves drooping sadly. Stiles sticks a finger into the pot to touch the desert dry soil. With a sigh he lifts it over to the sink and runs water over it until it’s basically swimming. It might bounce back, he hopes.

The refrigerator holds nothing but a moldy cucumber, yogurt way past its expiration date, half a bottle of ketchup and three cans of beers. He sighs again.

His bed is unmade like he left it two weeks ago and there’s evidence of his hasty packing scattered across the floor. All of that it’s an issue for another day. Stiles shrugs out of his suit jacket and loosens his tie. He dumps his clothes on the designated dirty laundry chair, stumbles into the bathroom to remove his contacts and then crawls beneath the covers. He stinks, but that too is an issue for another day. The sheets are cool on his skin and he reminds himself absently to turn up the thermostat in the morning. Fall is just around the corner and the air has turned crispy.

Someone is moving in the apartment above with heavy footsteps. Stiles stares up at the ceiling. It’s a nice building and Stiles likes it a lot, but it’s old and the structure is basically paper thin. It makes for cold winters and too many overheard lovers.

“There we go,” someone, a man, murmurs softly upstairs.

Someone else replies, a child, and their voice is too light for Stiles to make out the words.

“Goodnight,” the man says. “Have good dreams.”

Stiles smiles to himself.

“Goodnight to you too, upstairs neighbor dude,” he replies jokingly.

What follows is a couple of seconds of complete silence and Stiles closes his eyes, ready to succumb to sleep.

“Goodnight, neighbor,” sounds from upstairs and Stiles snaps his eyes open again to the noise of amused, childlike giggles.

That’s it. Stiles is never leaving his apartment ever again.

 

\---

 

Stiles sleeps for thirteen consecutive hours. He’s not sure what year it is when he wakes, only that he is famished and that grocery shopping is top priority unless he considers ketchup and beer sufficient sustenance. Spoiler alert: he doesn’t. He might have, during his college years, but now he’s like a certified adult and that shit doesn’t fly anymore. His taste buds are too refined and crave things like actual vegetables and _water._

So grocery shopping it is, only it will take careful planning. After last night’s mortifying disaster he must find some way to sneak unnoticed in and out of his apartment, lest the upstairs neighbor dude spots him. Stiles sits up in bed, grabs his spare set of glasses from the drawer in his nightstand and shoves them down on his nose. His phone screen lights up in his hands with the numbers 10:46 am. It’s a Thursday. Stiles hasn’t heard a single noise from upstairs since he woke up. Odds are that upstairs neighbor dude is at work. It’s a slight relief and Stiles sets to getting dressed with newfound confidence. He has more or less managed to completely avoid his various neighbors for the entire three years he has been living in the building, he can _easily_ pull off another three years. _At least._

Stiles gathers his things and with a quick peek out the door and into the deserted stairwell, he locks up his apartment and heads for the grocery store with an accomplished spring in his step. It stays with him for the duration of the grocery shopping, during which he buys a brand new non-moldy cucumber, a yet to expire yogurt and absolutely zero amount of ketchup.

It’s during the critical moment of entering his apartment building again that everything falls apart. Stiles goes for his standardized sneaky twirl, the trademarked Stilinski Spinorama, but he might add a tad too much flair to it. Before he knows it, the door handle has caught in his grocery bag and it rips right open, sending his groceries cascading across the ground.

“Fuckity fuck fuck!” Stiles exclaims and throws a glance heavenwards, like _really?_ Was that truly necessary? He sinks down to the ground and starts gathering his things in what remains of the grocery bag.

“Do you need help with that?” Someone asks and Stiles looks up into the face of a huge ass dog. Seriously! Huge! With dark brown eyes that stare straight into Stiles’ wretched soul and a lopsided smile as it pants, long pink tongue lolling out of its mouth. It might be the most majestic creature Stiles has ever seen.

Someone clears their throat and Stiles tears his eyes away to look up at the man holding the dog’s leash.

There’s grey in his otherwise black beard. It’s the first thing Stiles notices. That, and the laugh lines which frame multicolored, vaguely concerned eyes. Stiles wonders what it says about his life that people keep looking at him with concern.

“Uh, hi, yeah, thanks!” He blurts out and adjusts his glasses, which have slid down his nose while he was hunched over his scattered groceries.

The guy smiles, if only just a little, and bends down to help.

“Do you live here?” He asks as he grabs Stiles’ yogurt and hands it over to the dog. “Bear, gently.”

Stiles looks on in absolute delight as the massive dog, appropriately named Bear, takes the package into his mouth and holds it there. _Gently._

“Yeah, a couple of floors up,” Stiles replies, fetching a tomato that’s rolled off into the flower bed lining the building.

“Just moved in? I haven’t seen you around before,” the guy says and stands up, arms laden with food.

“Eh, nah, I’ve been here a while, I just travel a lot for work,” Stiles admits and carefully lifts the torn grocery bag off the ground. “I might also be a bit of a recluse.”

The guy ducks his head in obvious amusement, which sends a disproportionate thrill of excitement through Stiles. He holds the door open for Stiles and Bear as they make their way up the stairs.

“My sisters call me a hermit, so I have no place to judge,” he offers.

Stiles laughs.

“I feel like this whole building is filled with hermits and recluses, I couldn’t tell you the name of a single one of them. Oh!”

Stiles swirls around mid-step to face the guy, who nearly walks right into him because of the sudden stop. Stiles grimaces in apology and then adjusts the hold he has on the ripped grocery bag so he can reach out a hand.

“I’m Stiles, arguably overworked recluse. Nice to meet you.”

The guy smiles and shakes his hand, strong, warm fingers wrapping around Stiles’. It’s a very nice hand.

“Derek,” he says. “Accused hermit. This is Bear,” he adds and nods towards the dog, who wags his tail at the mention of his name. “He’s got more friends than I do.”

“I’m not the least surprised,” Stiles replies, reluctantly releasing Derek’s hand. “With a cute face like that?”

They make their way up to the fourth floor, where Stiles stops outside his door to wrangle the keys out of his pocket.

“This is your place?” Derek asks, a sudden weird tone to his voice.

Stiles sticks the key into the lock and turns it.

“Yeah, why?”

“This might sound odd, but did you by any chance say ‘goodnight, upstairs neighbor dude’ last night?”

Stiles freezes. No way. _No way._ What are the odds? Why is this his life? Stiles faceplants into the door with a dramatic groan.

“Oh my _god,_ I still can’t believe you heard that,” he whines pitifully. “I had plans to avoid you for the rest of my life!”

“How did that work out for you?” Derek replies and he sounds way too amused for Stiles’ liking.

Fuck. Truly. Fuck.

“I’m going to have to move out now,” Stiles says as he pushes away from the door so he can open it. “Change my identity. Disappear. Maybe I’ll move to Poland, my Polish is passable,” he muses as he leads the way into the kitchen. Derek and Bear trail behind him.

Stiles dumps the grocery bag at the kitchen counter and Derek gently places the groceries he’s been carrying next to the bag. Derek reaches towards Bear and takes the yogurt container from his mouth with a soft ‘thank you’. It’s the cutest fucking thing.

“It’s alright, you can at least stay in California if you want,” Derek says and hands him the yogurt with a smirk. “I thought it was pretty cute.”

It’s lame, but Stiles’ heart kind of skips a beat. He didn’t know that hearts could do that once you’ve reached your thirties, unless you’re having an actual heart attack. It’s both a nice and jarring sensation. He’s missed it.

“That’s cool. Of you. To let me stay, I mean.”

Stiles wants to punch himself in the face after that staccato performance. Derek just shrugs.

“No problem.”

They hover awkwardly for a second too long, until Bear presses his nose against the back of Derek’s hand. Derek jumps into motion.

“Oh, I guess we should get going,” he says, backing towards the hallway and Stiles swallows around the lump of disappointment lodged in his throat.

“Yeah, sure. Uh, thank you so much for the help,” Stiles says, his mind screaming at him that he’s fucking this up, whatever _this_ is.

“It really was no problem,” Derek replies.

Stiles follows them to the door, where Derek nods his bye and starts up the stairs to the next floor. Bear lingers and Stiles gives him a pat on the head.

“Come on, Bear,” Derek calls.

Bear looks up at Stiles with those big, brown soulful eyes. His tongue is lolling out again.

“Go on then,” Stiles says and nods towards the stairs, but Bear simply sits down by his feet and nudges Stiles’ hand with his nose.

Stiles figures, that if Bear could talk, he would’ve said something along the lines of ‘I know that you’re a huge fucking mess, but take charge of your life already’. At least that’s what Stiles assumes that Bear is trying to say, what with that meaningful gaze. It’s also completely possible that he’s begging for treats, but that doesn’t occur to Stiles until much later. Instead that look infuses Stiles with a newfound determination and courage.

“Derek!” He calls out.

Derek stops and turns, eyebrows raised in question. He looks even more confused at the sight of Bear sitting at Stiles’ feet.

“Would you wanna stay for lunch?” Stiles asks. “As thanks. I’m making pasta. And you _carried_ the pasta, so I figure that we have joint parenting over it now. Also you can tell your sisters that you totally talked to another person today.”

Derek is smiling.

“Sure, I’d like that,” he replies and Stiles’ heart soars.

“Cool.”

The potted plant sits in the kitchen sink where Stiles left it the night before. Beneath the dry, brown leaves, a tiny little green one peeks out.


End file.
